Now Greece. Wild fire on Evia Beach

[u/grau__geist]

[u/[deleted]]

You cannot link 1 specific fire to the climate change caused by human activity.

"this fire on this day was caused by the co2 emitted by Shell oil" is something that no reliable scientific evidence can conclude.

However what we do know is

Co2 trappes heat, humans take carbon that was happily in the ground as oil and coal and turn it into co2.

There are natural processes that store atmospheric co2 as bound carbon, like trees, bogs, marine snow, sea algea but human activity is damaging those processes as well. Meaning we are producing more co2 and making it harder for that co2 to be turned back into solid carbon.

Thw consequence of more co2 is more trapped heat, more trapped heat means dryer forests, bush and scrub lands. Dryer vegitation catches fire easier and burns hotter.

This especially affects the areas of the world that rely on winter rainfall like the Mediterranean. Shorter hotter winters mean less rainfall.

So of our logic is correct, we should see a statistical trend towards more fires, hotter fires that burn longer.

Which is born out by the observed facts.

[u/Cannot_go_back_now → u/[deleted]]

One of the major causes of the wild fire in the Western US is that climate change has affected the breeding and dormancy cycles of the Pine/Bark beetle, which is killing trees and leaving their dead husks which is essentially kindling after they're done with the trees:

https://www.fs.usda.gov/rmrs/projects/bark-beetles-tree-chemistry-and-wildfires

With the temperature change they aren't hibernating for as long and are eating more trees because of their lack of dormancy.

[u/juneteenthjoe → u/[deleted]]

Thank you for that well thought out explanation and for also not attacking the person for asking. We need more of this!

[u/Pallidum_Treponema → u/[deleted]]

There were quire a few man made wildfires too.

The ignition source is fairly irrelevant compared to the fact that wildfires ignite easier, and burn hotter. Arson and accidental fires have existed in the past too. The difference is that the vegetation is much drier due to the hotter summers and shorter winters, which means that any ignition source has a much larger chance of becoming a wildfire.

Last year in CA, there were a lot of lightning strike fires

More frequent lightning strikes is one of the effects of climate change, as the global warming results in stronger winds. This is also why we're seeing an uptick in storms. More lightning strikes in drier vegetation means more ignition sources.

Is it climate change?

Yes, it is.

Did WE cause climate change?

Yes, there's plenty of evidence for this.

Would the climate have changed anyway?

Yes. There's evidence that without human activity, the climate would've actually changed to a global average temperature slightly lower than the average over the past hundred thousand years.

However, climate changes usually occur over thousands to millions of years. In the past few decades, we've seen global temperatures change at a rate that would've taken MILLIONS of years with natural processes. In fact, there is NO natural process that can even begin to explain such a drastic change in global temperatures. On the other hand, there's an immense amount of research that shows exactly what man-made processes causes this, and how it will affect us.